ISS cosmonauts on spacewalk today

Two Russian cosmonauts will attept to upgrade the International Space Station Monday during a scheduled 6.5-hour spacewalk, space.com is reporting.

Gennady Padalka and Yuri Malenchenko will conduct a 6.5-hour spacewalk to complete maintenance and repairs beginning at at 9:40 a.m. Central time, and prepare the station for a new lab module.

Today’s work will be the first spacewalk of the station’s Expedition 32 mission. Two other astronauts on the station’s six-person crew will carry out a separate spacewalk for NASA on Aug. 30.

For today’s excursion, Padalka and Malenchenko will focus primarily on installing new micrometeoroid debris shields over parts of the Russian Zvezda service module and moving a hand-operated crane, called Strela-2, from the station’s Pirs docking module to the outpost’s Zarya control module.

The cosmonauts are moving the crane to clear the area by the Pirs compartment in preparation for a new Russian laboratory module. This new unit is slated to launch to the space station in 2013, NASA officials said.